


End the Cycle

by farrah_yondale



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Cissexism, Gen, triggers will be tagged in the beginning of each chapter, zelgan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 08:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4740482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrah_yondale/pseuds/farrah_yondale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only one male born in a century? Hah! You Hylians will come up with the most ludicrous fairy tales. Don't you know your own history, princess? We only have one man in our tribe because your soldiers murdered the rest of them. (abandoned)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

In this realm, there was a presence. Certainly not in the Realm of the Twili nor the realm where Hyrule Castle stood, for surely either of those realms would collapse under such a powerful presence. It had no arms, no body, no physical form, at least not one a denizen of the Light Realm could ever understand, but it was undeniably there and it was undeniably felt by those around it.

And it was a strong presence. The lesser beings that could feel its rage burning off its existence immediately shrunk back and began migrating away, knowing that were its power to increase anymore, they would be consumed by its fire.

This presence was met by its opposite, a cool water that might be able to douse its flames, but that would all depend on how their conversation would go.

Neither of these presences could speak or could form any semblance of words, but they could communicate. Were it to be translated so that humans could understand, the words would be something like this.

“I tire of this endless game.” If emotion could be presented through its communication, the second presence would no doubt exhibit a cold sort of annoyance.

“You tire? Hah!” The fiery presence erupted in flames, a sunburst of anger. But it was short-lived, quieted by the more overwhelming regret in its being. “Imagine how I feel...Stupid mortals...”

“Is he even mortal at this point? Poor boy.” The second presence inched closer to the pulsating heat of the first. If it had a body, it might have sat down next to it in a gesture of comfort.

The first presence rotated its equivalent of human wrists, stirring the air around it. “If only I could give him something...somehow.”

“Just drop it, Din. He's going to die in this cycle, anyway.”

The realm shifted again. Din's flame flared out once more, this time strongly enough so that her counterpart's water evaporated entirely. The second presence let out a long sigh as her being hissed from the interaction between their elements.

“What's this?” it suddenly asked. It seemed to be looking below their Realm, though if a mortal could somehow make their way into this Realm, all they would be able to see would be a translucent floor that led to nowhere.

“What, Nayru?” Din's snap was comparatively more controlled than what Nayru normally had to endure, to her surprise.

“The flow of time has changed again.”

There was no interaction between the two presences for a while. The aura of water around Nayru slowly swam back around her being, and as it did, the candlelight of Din's being flickered, a shadow's dance along the pellucid floor. A wind had blown, and Din and Nayru knew only one presence that could withstand both of theirs at once.

“I sensed it as well,” the last of the Three whispered this into the breeze. Her “voice” was always a mere step above silence, and she relied heavily on the wind to carry her words.

It had been a long time since all three goddesses had come together. A long time for the goddesses. They could only imagine how long that would be with a mortal's perception.

“Din, you might be able to sense it as well, if you spent one moment _not_ setting this Realm on fire.”

“Oh, hush, Nayru. You only wish _you_ could feel something for once in your immortal life.”

“The Gerudo boy is not going to die,” Farore interrupted quietly.

This time, the Realm shook with both Din and Nayru's shock. Din flared again, while Nayru's being erupted with the ocean's current. If the two had not been compliments, they might have brought the Realm down with them.

Farore ignored their dramatic responses and smiled lightly at the Goddess of Power. “You picked a good Bearer, Din. He's the only boy who survives.”

*

Gossip was Hyrule's greatest tool in warfare.

The fact that so many races considered it as shameful trivialities old biddies spun out of boredom only made it more potent a weapon. No one outside of the Hylian race took it seriously, and so no one could ever predict the level of destruction it wrought.

It had ripped entire societies in half before, caused neighboring kingdoms to fall because _this_ person said _that_. If it was needed, Gossip could change the meanings of words, make lies become truths, and within ten years, not a trace of old facts would be left in the mind of a Hylian.

It would come as no surprise then, that many truths just weren't so.

They said in Hyrule that if you wanted to find someone who knew the truth, you would have to find a Sheikah. On the other hand if you actually wanted to know the truth, you would either have to beat it out of them (which was impossible, unless you yourself were a Sheikah, but then that would be pointless because you would know the truth already) or you would have to spend the rest of your life trying to search for it. Since the first option was impossible and the second required effort, Hylians remained ignorant of the truth.

Not that it mattered. Even if one in ten-thousand Hylians did somehow manage to get the faintest inkling of the truth, the Sheikah would slide out from the shadows and pin the poor fellow to the wall, whispering a threat into his ear.

“Tell that bit of information to anyone, and I'll slit that pretty little throat of yours,” the leader of the Sheikah murmured into a peasant's neck. She was a farm-girl who was apparently too smart for her own good. “Do you want to see your blood run the same way when you slaughter those farm animals of yours?” Thoroughly frightened, the girl never spoke of whatever she had found out to anyone.

In actuality, it was the Sheikah who wrought havoc upon Hyrule. They were the masters of gossip, the King of Hyrule's right hand, hence, the existence of the Gossip Stones, which furthered the King's lies. Of course, not every Sheikah was like this.

But those Sheikah didn't last very long.


	2. Massacre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for murder, death and violence

Ganondorf's earliest memory was fire. The image of his sister's sweat-soaked clothes stuck to her back, auburn hair plastered to a stricken face. Her only weapon was a rusted knife she had snatched from the kitchens, hand wrapped so tightly around the bolster her fingers were beginning to turn as red as the fire surrounding them. 

“Nabooru!” he remembered shouting, though in retrospect it probably had served as more of a distraction than a warning. She glanced once to her younger brother and then, sensing the enemy charging at her, swiped away at his sword and killed him with one stab. 

Hylian armor had weaknesses, and the Gerudo had quickly learned to exploit them. 

But only so much. A ten-year old desert girl could only hold out so long against against trained soldiers. Legs that were used to only a few hours of standing began to feel like lead, and with every swipe, Nabooru's feet grew more and more sluggish. 

Ganon had been doing whatever he could do aid his sister, throwing whatever he found on the ground, shouting to distract the soldiers. But as the battle wore on, he ran out of things to throw, and the arid smoke began to burn at his lungs. With Gerudo dying frighteningly quickly, the Hylians and Sheikah had far outnumbered them, and Nabooru was now facing half a dozen of the King's army at once. 

She missed the block this time, grunting as the sword slashed through her biceps. Her left arm dropped to the side, and she thrusted her knife forward. She missed again, her movements too slow to even keep up with an armored soldier. She saw the sword coming for her head and waited.

Ganon heard a scream but it did not belong to his sister. 

Caught up in their panic, neither Gerudo had noticed a Sheikah girl --tall and lanky like Nabooru-- tugging at the arms of the soldiers, begging them for something Ganon couldn't hear over the roar of the fire. The four-year old boy might have heard her shout something like, “Stop!” and then watched as she threw herself in front of the blow that should have killed Nabooru. 

Nabooru fell back, almost toppling over her brother. 

The Sheikah girl stumbled with her, dropping to her knees with a splash of scarlet over her face. 

The Hylian soldier stopped, rightfully confused.

He was relieved of the burden of trying to figure out what was happening by a call for retreat in the distance. Four of the soldiers behind him immediately answered by running out of the abode. He and another soldier left with them after a moment of tarrying. 

Nabooru had gotten the same idea. With the fire around them, it was best to run out quickly. She hauled the injured Sheikah out of their home and motioned for Ganondorf to follow. 

“Hey,” Nabooru called, setting her down a good few feet from the threshold. The heat of their burning home was nothing compared to the blistering afternoon sun. 

“I'm fine,” she breathed, voice surprisingly soft for such a hard face. 

“That blow should have killed you.”

But the girl's eyes were flitting haphazardly around, assessing their surroundings. Her mind seemed occupied with other things. 

“You have to lie to them,” she whispered, gesturing to Ganondorf. “Tell them you're a girl.”

“I don't understand.”

“Just trust me,” the girl hissed. The moment in which Nabooru and the Sheikah had been occupied with each other had been a moment too long. A soldier in that time frame had jerked Ganon away from his sister, shoving him with a handful of other Gerudo his age in the square where the tribe usually held its gatherings. 

“Hey—” Nabooru's voice barely left her throat before the Sheikah girl held an arm out in front of her.

“Wait.”

It wasn't as if she had a choice. 

The soldier tugged Ganondorf back by his ponytail. Children were difficult to gender as it was, and Gerudo clothing was typically identical for all genders, which made it even harder for a Hylian to tell the difference between a boy or a girl (or those who identified somewhere else, but that thought rarely crossed a Hylian's mind). 

“What's your name, kid?” the Hylian spat. 

“Meesha.” It was the first girl's name Ganon could think of, his mother's. 

Apparently, that was not an answer the soldier was interested in, and his attention returned to a Sheikah standing beside him.

His grasp loosened over the child's hair and he barked, “How many boys are left?”

The Sheikah closed his eyes for a moment and then answered, “One. But...” His eyes opened, focused his gaze to where the young Sheikah, Nabooru and an assembly of Gerudo were standing. “Someone is trying to interfere...”

The Sheikah flinched visibly beside Nabooru, but made no other motion to indicate that she was the culprit. 

Unfortunately, the man glaring at his tribes-fellow was a Sheikah, and Sheikah noticed almost everything. 

“What is that gash across your cheek, Impa?” he asked, his voice light, playful. “I don't believe Gerudo scimitars make that sort of wound.”

Nabooru had to commend Impa. Had it been her, Nabooru would have shook uncontrollably, probably would have collapsed right there from fear.

“Some of these soldiers need to be trained better.” Her voice was even. She could have fooled Nabooru, probably convinced the entire tribe around her. But the Sheikah gave no indication that he was convinced. He opened his mouth to retort, only to be interrupted. 

“Forgive my daughter.” A woman's voice cut through the air like a short gust of wind. All turned to see something that resembled a skeleton more than an adult woman, and yet, despite her stature, she exuded the type of confidence reserved for a queen. “She is still young and has foolish ideals flitting about that hollow skull of hers.” She stopped a foot away from the group of children the soldier had gathered and leaned to one side, hand on her hip. “Impa, stop that!” she snapped suddenly, not bothering to look in her daughter's direction. Nabooru had very little inclination towards magic, but she still felt a strong presence swell and then shatter next to her.

“This one.” Impa's mother tugged on a child that was not Ganon. “This is the boy. Kill him. The rest of you, get out of my sight!” 

Six children scattered to their families. Nabooru breathed a sigh of relief as she felt her brother wrap his arms around her waist.

“Wait, wait. No!”

Ganon didn't see what had happened. Nabooru's hands were locked firmly over his eyes, but even if they hadn't been, the boy had no desire to see what had happened to his tribesman. He heard the whirling sound of a sword cutting through air and flesh, followed by the screams of someone whom Ganon assumed was the boy's mother. 

He felt his sister pushing him to the right, one hand blocking his periphery so he still couldn't see. 

“Come,” she said. “We need to put out the fires.”

*

A screech split Ganon's ears, so harsh that his hands immediately jumped to cup the sides of his head. Nabooru instinctively wrapped her arms around her brother. In front of Tribe Leader Jaswal's large adobe, a line of swollen sheets lay side to side, one of which had been cast aside to reveal the long, limp body of a Gerudo. 

The woman screaming, Nabooru realized, was their eldest sister. 

“Ma!” Jahanara, despite her unrivaled strength, was a woman prone to tears. And yet, her cries that afternoon echoed a particularly heavy desperation that neither of her siblings would ever hear again. “Ma!” she cried again. Two of her friends held the woman under her arms, blunting the fall as her knees gave way. 

“Mama?” Nabooru had been too busy staring to notice her brother was already a few feet ahead of her. She ran after him and swooped him up into her arms before he could make it to their mother's body. Instead of protesting, the child merely turned to his sister and asked, “Nabooru, what's wrong with Mama? Why is _Aji_ crying?”

All of this was too much for the ten-year old's sensations. Her mother dead, her sister screaming, her brother asking questions. She had almost died a few hours ago, and honestly no longer knew how she had remained on her feet after all this. 

“Hey.”

Nabooru wouldn't realize it until later, but Impa had saved her in more than one way that afternoon. The Sheikah's voice was the calm after a storm, a soft, hushed concern that no one else could muster or bother to grace her with. It directed her back to reality.

Impa was staring at her, worry written everywhere on her face, probably because Nabooru had taken a good minute to even notice her existence. Ganon, she realized, was staring, too. 

“Do you need anything?” Impa asked. The wound cutting across her jawline had been hastily stitched with thread and apparently a fair helping of magic. 

Nabooru blinked. “Uh, no. I'm fine.” In the time it had taken for Nabooru to answer, the Sheikah had wrapped her hand around the Gerudo's. 

“Come with me,” and Nabooru, thoroughly shaken, had no choice but to follow. 

Impa took them back to their house, which was now decidedly less on fire. Mobs of Gerudo with handfuls of Sheikah were running about smothering out flames with sand. Water was a precious commodity in the desert, and they had already wasted enough trying to quell the larger fires, so sand was their only other option.

Impa led her inside, as if the house did not belong to the two Gerudo she welcomed in. Another Sheikah stood on the other side of the entrance, tall, well-built and far too relaxed about murder like most Sheikah.

“Ah,” he greeted. He smiled so wide that the red markings over his eye scrunched together. “Please come in.” He made a grandiose gesture towards the back of the living space. Had it been a less gruesome circumstance, it might have warranted a sarcastic remark from Nabooru. (“This is _my_ house.”) But alas, it took all of the energy in the Gerudo just to obey his command. 

Ganondorf was still latched on Nabooru's hip, apparently unwilling to let go until she sat down and the awkward positioning finally forced him to detach himself from his sister. 

It was only now that another person was scrutinizing her appearance that Nabooru realized how terrible her state was. What had once been a knee-length tunic was now singed up to her mid-thighs. A hole burned straight through the loose fabric over her left knee, and the fire had consumed the entire right leg of her pants. Aside from the condition of her clothes, however, she had sustained few injuries.

“Not so bad, thankfully,” the man mused. “We'll need to stitch up that arm, though.”

After a thorough inspection, the man placed one hand on each of the children's chests and a faint light glowed from his palms. 

“A little smoke in both your lungs, but nothing some good fresh air won't fix.”

Finally, Nabooru's senses began to return back to this dimension and she asked, “Who are you?”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” He gave the girl another faint smile. “I'm Issa. Impa's father. May I have the honor of knowing your sweet name?”

“Nabooru,” she thought she said and her mouth certainly moved, but he apparently didn't catch it.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Nabooru.” 

It was the first time Ganondorf had spoken since entering the house. He caught the attention of the Sheikah man, who regarded him warmly, and shrunk back behind his sister. 

“And what's your name, child?”

“Meesha,” he said into Nabooru's tunic. Aware of his shyness, Issa didn't press any further and remained silent as he treated Nabooru's burns. 

“Your turn,” he expressed cheerfully, turning to Ganon, and Nabooru had half a mind to punch him. The boy, if possible, shrunk back even further and then glanced up with a set of hesitant eyes at his sister. She nodded, and he slid out from behind her. 

“Hey.” As they busied themselves, Impa took the opportunity to speak to Nabooru. She knelt down in front of her, a hand on the Gerudo's knee. She glanced once at her father and then whispered, “I...wanted to tell you something.” She waited for Nabooru to give her some sort of indication to continue. “Your...well, when we were fighting I 'sensed' that he was a boy, but now...it's gone.”

“I don't care. He's alive.”

“I know. But...it could come back. And if the less friendly Sheikah in our tribe sense it, I'm afraid of what might happen. Look, I don't know if he's doing it consciously or unconsciously or whether that's just how he feels but...you should probably speak to him about it.”

Nabooru glanced over to her brother, who was giggling as Issa tickled his cheek with a finger. She sighed. She was not looking forward to explaining all this to a four-year old. 

*

“Traitor!” 

The Sheikah, despite having unearthly perception and agility, were a notoriously lazy bunch. As such, Gul had enough time to register that yes, something very angry was about to come at her with a large enough force to hurt her, but, no, it was not enough force for her to care.

And so, the thirty-something year old (the Sheikah had no concept of time and rarely kept track of their age after they hit twenty) was now pinned to the mud brick wall of her dead friend's house by her dead friend's rightfully irate daughter.

“Jahanara, listen—”

“ _Raas ki_! You're the reason my parents are dead!”

“Shut up yourself and listen to me, you silly girl!” Gul snapped back, angling her head as much as she could with Jahanara's fist in the way. “This is no betrayal.”

“Ha?” the new tribe leader spat. “Really?”

Most people's gaze wavered when it was met with a Sheikah's, from fear, from humility, from whatever. That didn't matter. The point was no one did it. The Gerudo, however, were most notable for being the only group of people with the audacity to insult Hyrule's most feared assassins. 

Gul's eyes were narrowed. Everything about the woman was sharp, her nose, the lines creased over her forehead, her stern glare, her clothing. Her hair was the same, immaculate, perfectly in order and in control as everything should be. 

Although, the Gerudo saying went that people tried to control the little things in life when everything else was in chaos. 

“Think about it, Jahanara. Had I openly opposed this massacre, it would have no doubt led to the death of me and my followers. There would have been even more causalities without my group to dampen the death toll. And you would have been left without any defense or any intelligence from our side. Yes, I killed your mother.” The Gerudo closed her eyes at the mention of this. “But I will make sure the rest of you are clothed and fed and strong enough to defend yourselves should the occasion arise.”

For a moment, Jahanara looked as if she might claw her nails into the woman's face. She inhaled and then let go of her collar.

“I'm sorry,” she began with another sigh. “You're right...I...should have thought...Anyway, I should thank you for what you've done. We would have lost more if you hadn't provided food and medical aid after the battle.”

Gul smiled. “You'll make an excellent leader, Jahanara.”

And just like that, Jahanara burst into tears.

*

Zelda had almost drowned twice when she was three. Once when she was four (this one, she could never forget since it happened on her birthday, of all days). Once more when she was five. Once already at six. And now here she was, gulping and gasping for breath at the edge of the river that flowed outside Castle Town, drowning yet again. 

At this point, the threat of drowning hardly incited even the slightest hint of fear in the six-year old. It had become as normal as sitting propped up at the dinner table with her father, or as normal as being chased by peahats whenever she wandered around in Hyrule Field, or as normal as being stalked by an ancient, cursed tribe every moment of the day...

Speaking of which, she was quite sure one of such members was probably watching her now and would come and rescue her. Any moment now. 

After a few of these expectant moments, Zelda realized a Sheikah would _not_ be coming to haul her stubborn, mischievous body out of the water and that she would probably have to learn how to fight a river current before her lungs gave out.

Thankfully, the princess, if a bit foolish and reckless sometimes, was rather clever for her age and somehow managed to make her way to the edge of the riverbank in one piece. How long that piece would last given that the girl was cold and aching was anyone's guess.

She collapsed onto the grass, heaving, suddenly less shy about showing off her lower extremities. 

“Not bad.”

Her voice was a rasp. Zelda never understood how her father endured a sound equivalent to cats scratching against glass, even if Azar was exceptionally good at keeping him alive. Zelda tilted her head back. The Sheikah was inspecting her with her hands on her hips and made no indication that she meant to help the poor, soaked princess on the ground. 

“Perhaps with a bit of practice, you would make an excellent Zora. Better than a Hylian princess, really.”

“For once, Azar,” the princess said, exasperated, not bothering to waste energy in getting up. “Could you keep your filthy mouth shut?”

Any other child might have flinched at the swiftness with which Azar thrust her heel at the princess's neck. But Zelda was used to being almost murdered on a regular basis. 

“You know, princess.” The tribe leader's voice always seemed to smooth out when she threatened people. (It could be part of the reason for which Zelda always provoked the woman; it would mean not having to listen to that grating sound, even if it resulted in a bruise or two.) “I could slit that thin little neck of yours in one swipe and your father wouldn't have to know. Poor Zelda went out for a swim and cut her throat on a railing. What a horrible accident.”

The Hylian's only reply was a frown, as if she were merely disappointed with the prospect of being dead. 

“But alas, _Zadeh_ Azar exudes an infinite amount of mercy,” she concluded, removing her foot. “Anyway, your father has summoned you, expecting you to be in your study, well, studying but of course, he won't know how much of a rebel his darling daughter is. Now get up.” Azar lifted her hand to hover over the princess, palm down and pressed her fingers together, absorbing all the water in Zelda's clothes into a swollen ball that grew larger with each droplet it collected. She tossed the ball carelessly into the river and repeated herself, “Get up.”

It felt as though Azar's magic had absorbed more than just water out of the princess. She suddenly felt the strength return to her body and had enough energy to jump to her feet. 

“Come.” 

Zelda hesitated, knowing what she meant to do. “No.”

She hated Sheikah travel, even if it was fast. It was painful and uncomfortable and it felt like she had inhaled a year's worth of dust when it was over. 

“Do you want your father to find out what you were really doing?”

The answer to that was obvious. Zelda stepped into Azar's arms and braced herself as she heard the familiar _tuk_ that accompanied a Sheikah disappearing into thin air. Her body thinned and stretched and flattened, a shadow hurtling across Hyrule Field faster than a hawk, until the view of the main hall came into focus. 

Zelda coughed. First water in her lungs and now dust. 

“In,” the Sheikah ordered. If she noticed the girl's discomfort, she did not care for it. 

Zelda regarded the heavy, ornate doors before her. The design that adorned the gray polished metal in front of her matched the same elaborate handiwork on her dress—or at least it would have, if Zelda hadn't played with one too many cats today. She had seen it so many times in paintings and clothing and banners, she was quite sure she could re-draw the exact design in her sleep. 

Azar pressed on the door with light fingers, strangely powerful for such little muscle, but then, Zelda supposed that also had something to do with Sheikah magic. 

The door opened with a slow creak, and the grandeur of Hyrule Castle's throne room came into view. 

Her father did not sit at his seat (he rarely ever did) and instead stood on the left side of the room, apparently more interested in the curtains than his only guest. She was another Sheikah whose exaggerated humility Zelda immediately recognized. 

“—If it pleases you, Your Majesty, I would like to voice my opinion.”

He finally turned towards her. “Go on.”

“I realize that despite our grievances with the Gerudo, they are still valuable allies. It would be unwise to leave them as they are. After the soldiers retreated, I and twenty of my tribesfolk stayed behind and tended to the wounded. We tried our best to make it seem as though this fight was out of our control.”

The king's mouth was slowly curving into a frown as she spoke, but he did not lash out.

“I propose that we continue this exchange. Gerudo, as I'm sure you are aware, despise Hylians and despise Sheikah. But we have old ties with them, a...shall we say, sort of nostalgia that we may be able to evoke in our old friends. I propose that my comrades and I act as though we genuinely regret and attempted to stop your attack, while continuing to help them rebuild. This way, we will not have to break the trust between our tribes, and there will be less of a chance the Gerudo retaliate. You will still have all the intelligence you need, and all the trade routes will remain secure.”

The king smiled. “You are clever, Gul. Very well. Do as you wish.”

The Sheikah's second-in-command pressed a hand to her chest and bowed. “Thank you, sir.” She left with a small glance in Zelda's direction, but nothing more. 

“My child,” King Daphnes called, extending his arms out. “Come here.”

Zelda, breaching all her tutors' instructors on how to act around her father, ran towards him and jumped into his outstretched arms. 

“Father,” she greeted with a warm smile. 

“Dear Zelda,” he laughed. “Have you gotten heavier, or have I gotten weaker?”

“Probably both, Father.” He laughed harder at that. 

“I'm sure you know why I've summoned you. Today is your seventh birthday.”

Zelda had completely forgotten. She would have to start her drowning counter over from the beginning again. 

“Traditionally speaking, most Zeldas do not undergo training for knighthood. But I feel, given your propensity for running out of the castle...” He seemed amused, but Zelda still blushed in embarrassment. “...it would be advisable to at least teach you basic self-defense. I'm sure you'll enjoy your teachings.”

“Yes, Father!” Zelda nodded eagerly. 

“Then, go. Your training begins today.”

The princess dropped down to the carpeted floor with equal enthusiasm. She sprinted out of the hall, ignoring Azar's defiant look. Of course, Azar hated her, she thought. Azar hated anyone who attracted the King's attention more than her.

Why the water hated her so much, though, that she could never figure out.

*

“I'm training you.”

“Thanks for the offer, but I already know how to kill.”

“You know how to kill, but you don't know how to kill a Sheikah.”

Nabooru stared at her. Point taken. 

Impa took the lull in her temper as an opportunity to unstrap a knife from her waist and press it into the Gerudo's unwilling hands. It sagged in her palms, heavy, the opposite of the feather-light scimitars Nabooru was used to wielding.

Nabooru didn't know exactly what happened, but she jumped anyway, grip around her brother's hand tightening. The sand seemed to have given way for Impa to plummet through, as if the desert had finally decided it was sick of all these traitors spoiling its land and took the Sheikah into the depths of the earth. For a brief moment Nabooru thought it had been quicksand, only she was quite sure the stuff didn't work that way.

“Can you hear me?” Nabooru felt Ganondorf latch his face onto her hip. He wrapped his arms around her and shuddered. The sound of Impa's voice echoed around them, twenty Impas in all directions all speaking at once. 

“Yes.”

“Good. But you can't tell where I am from my voice, can you?”

If shadows could smirk, she would definitely be doing that right now.

“So...figure out where I am another way.”

Ganon unlatched his face from Nabooru and stared up at her, wondering what she would do. Well, perhaps Gerudo ears couldn't hear the goddesses, but Nabooru trusted them enough to pick out any odd frequencies in the air. 

She was still for a moment, heard absolutely nothing. Tried to find her with her eyes instead. She stared at her own shadow, long and gray in the afternoon sun, and then at her brother's. It was too dark, she noticed, too dense for someone smaller than her. 

As soon as she realized, a figure sprung up from the boy's shadow, serpent's fangs aimed at Ganondorf's exposed neck. Nabooru grabbed the Sheikah's throat, foregoing the knife in her hand and pinned her down in the sand. 

“You—” Nabooru spat a word in Gerudo their eldest sister had told her never to say. 

“Relax,” Impa laughed with surprising ease despite the fact that Nabooru's hand was wrapped firmly around her neck. “I wouldn't have hurt him.”

Impa just seemed to be one step ahead of her altogether today. Of course. Why would she kill the boy when she had risked her life trying to save him? Hearing this, Nabooru eased her weight of the Sheikah. 

“Good. Now keep doing that but faster.”

They trained like that for hours. Every day, Nabooru would endure the heat of Gerudo Desert from sunrise to noon, her brother attached to her arm for as long as he could before she'd jump after Impa's shadow. 

The boy never moved during these sessions, but his eyes were always following. While he had never practiced like his sister, he quickly noticed the faint quivers where Impa was hiding, indistinct slithers across the sand that could never have belonged to a snake, glints of metal where light wasn't supposed to exist. And so, Ganondorf learned to dance with shadows. 

*

If anything, Nabooru and Impa's relationship was a microcosm of Gerudo and Sheikah affairs. They could usually be found at each other's throats trying to gut one another, and hardly a good word passed between the two of them, yet for some reason they were still considered friends. 

Often, when they tired of increasing the bruise count on the other's body, they would sit on a low cliff overhanging the village and stare off into the desert in silence. 

They would watch ant-sized Gerudo milling about, coming in and out of adobes or tent-shops. Almost everything had been rebuilt by Gerudo and Sheikah hands, with the exception of a few roofs that still remained sagging and splintered from fires. 

Nabooru felt leather collide with the back of her head. 

“Ay! _Ghatti_!” Nabooru turned and before she could make out the face, another shoe bounced off her cheek. The attacker let out a stream of words in Gerudo that Impa could hardly make out. Instead of retaliating, Nabooru laid back on the sand, unconcerned.

“Ha, screw off, Mitai.”

Mitai and four other Gerudo all stood about three feet away, arms crossed or on their hips or some other gesture that exhibited aggression. 

“Hey, you know what the elders have been saying?” Mitai was two years younger than both the girls, but somehow always managed to bully children that were much older than her. “That none of this would have even happened if it weren't for your mother.” Mitai spat another curse in Gerudo. 

Nabooru sprung at her. Not what Impa expected, given that she had been lounging about comfortably in the sand a mere millisecond ago. Impa chided herself for not being able to predict her sparring partner correctly. 

Mitai's reaction was to scream (a respectable decision if not very effective in actually protecting her) and plant herself firmly where she was so that Nabooru could properly beat her senseless. Her four friends with obviously more self-preservation skills than Mitai immediately abandoned her. 

One punch was enough to knock the eight-year old out. 

“You're going to be in so much trouble.”

Mitai's friends were all gone, but in their place was Ganondorf. With equal speed, Nabooru jumped at her brother, who also started screaming hysterically. She wrapped one arm around his neck and the other around his waist, holding him down, struggling to keep him from escaping.

“I'm telling! I'm telling!” he screeched, fighting in her grasp. 

“She insulted Ma!”

Ganon stopped moving. 

“She insulted Ma...” she repeated, sniffing into his neck. Nabooru's arms around him loosened, and he turned to face her. 

“Is Mama really never coming back?” he asked. His hands had never felt so small on her cheeks. 

At the mention of this, Impa started forward and sat next to the Gerudo, a consoling hand rubbing over her shoulder. 

“No, she's not.”

“Why?”

“That's just how it is—” Nabooru's voice broke and she buried her face into Impa's chest, trying to suppress the urge to cry. 

*

“Impa you must listen to me.”

Her mother was thin, too thin, muscles in her arms all but atrophied. Most ten-year olds didn't notice such things, didn't hear the worn note in their mother's voice when she was doing all she could to pretend everything was fine. 

But Impa was a Sheikah, trained to kill, to hear the subtleties in the softest of sounds. The Truth could not hide from a Sheikah, no matter how hard it tried. 

Her mother knelt down, calloused hands rough on her cheek. Impa's mother had always had the strangest maroon shade to her eyes, not like most Sheikah whose eyes were bright, scarlet, brimming with mischief. They somehow looked more sorrowful than they usually did.

“They will come for us, child, after the stunt we pulled, but no matter what I or your father say...” Impa's hand went over her mother's. “You must do as they tell you. Swear your life to the princess, and they will forgive you. You must live, do you understand?”

“Mother...” she started in protest.

“Impa, listen to me! The princess will be guarded by a Sheikah, and better you than a liar. If you do this...our sacrifices will not be in vain.”

“Mother...” It was a hushed whisper this time. She blinked and felt her own hot tear plop down over her knuckles. 

Ten year olds weren't supposed to understand that their parents were being put to death. 

*

“Haaaaa.....” Jahanara's goal today seemed to be to recite every Gerudo-specific expletive in the shortest amount of time possible. She had already uttered a handful of curses she had promised never to speak again in front of her little brother, and Jahanara _never_ went back on her promises to Ganon. 

“I can't. I can. Not. Do this. Not possible.” She inhaled the way one did when they had to endure antiseptic on a raw wound. “I can't do this anymore.” Her eyes focused on the floor. Ganon wasn't sure if she even knew he was there. 

“How do they expect me...? _How_ do they expect me?” A sharp rap on the door interrupted her incoherent rambling. Ganon shrunk back and squeezed the doll in his arms as his sister went to open it.

“ _Rasht_ Jahanara,” a woman greeted, addressing her with respect. 

“I don't have time for formalities, Nailah. Please speak quickly.”

“I'm afraid to be the harbinger of bad news. But we have lost contact with all the pledged Sheikah for the last two weeks. We're suspicious they've been...caught.”

Ganon had no idea what any of that meant, but the fingers rubbing Jahanara's temples were enough to tell him it wasn't good. She inhaled deeply and then exhaled. And then she answered, “Fine. We're allied with them, but if their king had forsaken them, I doubt there's anything we can do for them. You may leave, Nailah.”

Jahanara returned to her desk and resumed, “ _How_ do they expect me...?”

*

The hall of the throne room was silent, as many halls in Hyrule Castle were. It was broken only by the swift slapping of bare feet on marble, followed by a brisk tapping of boots chasing after them. The owner of the boots threw a lanky arm at the bare-footed six year old and tugged back, rebuking:

“Princess, you cannot go to her.” 

What right did she have to chide her, when no one wished to run to that woman more than her?

“No, no, no!” Zelda squirmed in her grasp. Years of playing and breaking rules made her rather agile for someone of her standing. “I want Gul! I don't want you!”

“Princess, she has committed serious crimes against this country.” It took all the strength in Impa to keep her voice flat. She convinced herself that if she could detach herself from the physical realm into the darkness, she could do the same with her speech. “You cannot see her.”

“What about you!” the child screeched. She was beginning to slip out of Impa's grasp. “Why can't they punish you instead?” 

“Believe me, princess, I would rather forfeit my life in her place.”

Even a six year old could hear that break in her voice. Zelda stopped struggling and turned around, her defiant face now filled with concern. For all of the skills Impa possessed, she was still a ten-year old. She dropped into a crouch and began to sob. 

Zelda stood there in silence and watched as her new guard cried, knowing the wisdom of expressing one's self without interruption. She waited until Impa's tears hushed before placing a small hand over her knee. The Sheikah hurriedly wiped her face with the back of a sleeve.

“Forgive me,” she said, her voice heavy. 

The princess shook her head. “It's fine.” 

*

The heat of the desert sun burned at her neck. Nabooru sorely regretted leaving her scarf at home, but the position she currently lay in was too comfortable for her to move. 

Or maybe it wasn't really laziness. Maybe she got attached to people too easily, and she was sitting in this exact spot like she had done every day for the past two weeks waiting for someone she had thought had been a dear friend. Someone she thought wouldn't abandon her like her mother and her father and her elder sister. 

She finally did show up, though. All hints of laziness evaporated at the sight of Impa at the entrance to Gerudo Valley, and she stood immediately. She was not with her tribefolk, however, which was strange, Nabooru thought. Usually the Sheikah arrived in a group.

“Impa!” Nabooru called, running up to her. But Impa did not react.

Instead, Impa regarded her with hollow eyes, that energetic and curious sheen all but gone. 

“I don't ever want to see you again.” Her mouth closed over the words, slowly, as if she said something but meant something else entirely. Nabooru blinked. A slew of questions bombarded her mind. She wanted to say “What?” but it didn't seem adequate enough for what she wanted to express. She opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it, confused, as Impa took a few steps back. At first, Nabooru thought the arm she slung forward had meant to hit her, and she threw her arms up to protect herself.

But all she heard was the sound of wood against metal, and Impa was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Zelda lesbian drama, the novel. 
> 
> If you're wondering why this chapter is so long, good news! I have absolutely no idea, and I am currently screaming at the computer monitor (read: myself) demanding answers. Anyway, this was supposed to be a setup for the actual story and it just...went out of control. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I also got a little frustrated as this increased in page length (why is it so long???) so my writing may have faltered horribly at some points. Thankfully, the rest of the chapters will resume a more light-hearted tone like the prologue and it will probably be easier for me to write it all. 
> 
> Also, this is the first time I'm writing something that I actually plan to be long. I hope the inexperience isn't too obvious.


	3. On the Topic of Beards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Menstruation, menstrual pain tw

Contrary to popular Hylian belief, Gerudo women were were neither shy of their beards nor were they ashamed of them. 

It was quite normal for them, really. Something about their genetics made them more prone to hormonal imbalances, fertility issues and the like. The line between men and women was less of a line and more of a smudged wavy pattern on the sand that no one really bothered about. If you identified as somewhere on the line or outside of the line or some sixty-two miles above it and into space, no one really minded as long as you did your fair share of work. 

It had just become a rare thing after their selective genocide. Since the line was so blurred between genders, whoever the soldiers had mistaken for men had been slaughtered along with them. And so, no more women with beards.

At least, not until a few years after the massacre. 

Jahanara was sixteen during the attack on the Gerudo. She was twenty when her menses suddenly decided to come five months late and with an extra liter of blood. 

Ganondorf knew his sister's pain tolerance was well beyond the average Gerudo's. She didn't even flinch at shin kicks, could knock bone against bone repeatedly without breaking a sweat. At twelve years old, no child in the tribe could best her in a wrestling match, never had she tapped out from the pain. 

So he took it quite seriously when he saw her curled up on the floor, moaning in pain.

“Let death take me,” she sighed, rolling over to face her brother. Ganon lay on the floor next to her, tiny fingers clasped in her palm. “My time on this Earth is coming to an end. I'm glad that you could be here with me in my final hours.”

“ _Aji_ ,” the boy cried, tears in his eyes.

“Good Goddess.” The two siblings looked up to see Nabooru, arms crossed. Her posture couldn't have exuded more annoyance if she tried. “Drama Queen.”

It was only once Jahanara started noticing excessive hair growth on her body that she realized this hadn't been merely a hiccup—an usually long, painful hiccup—in her hormones and was actually a manifestation of a disease. At least that was what the doctors said. (She ignored them)

Excessive hair growth included her face. Within a few months, Jahanara had grown a thick beard. She considered it her reward for putting up with a less than punctual menstrual cycle. 

But with a beard came the fear of death. Hylian soldiers looked on first in confusion, and then anger. They threatened her life, warning the tribe that if they hid any men amongst them, they would all be slaughtered. Jahanara and her family insisted that she was female. The soldiers didn't believe them.

“Do you want to see the last nine years of bloody rags as proof?!” Jahanara screeched, running after the soldiers with what Nabooru certainly hoped was not a bloody rag.

And so, the truth of Gerudo women having beards returned into the Hylian psyche. Soldiers stationed at the entrance of Gerudo Valley tittered whenever Jahanara walked by, but the woman cared little for the opinions of Hylians. She had liked the look of a beard since she was a child, and no mocking of the soldiers would change that.

Ganondorf was the next person to be the target of derision. He had been hidden away as the youngest sister Meesha for the last eleven years. At fifteen, Meesha's chin showed inklings of a beard, and she now had to walk by fitful laughter along with her sister.

Unfortunately, however, Meesha didn't have any “proof”. Despite the Gerudo's lax views on gender, to Hylians, she was as male as the soldiers stationed at the entrance of the valley and her beard only reinforced that.

It would probably come as a surprise then that the King of Hyrule welcomed two bearded women and their clean-faced sister into his castle with so much warmth. 

“This can't be the same guy,” Nabooru said in a hushed whisper. “He's too nice! Look at this letter. And this carriage. No way this is the same person who ordered a massacre.”

“It's politics,” Jahanara replied evenly, arms crossed. “Of course he'll be warm to us so that we forgive him. I don't doubt this invitation is part of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, from what I've heard, Hylians have been having some issues with trade lately,” Meesha explained. “I wouldn't be surprised if this was his way of trying to reduce tensions between our merchants and theirs. What?” Nabooru was staring at her, one eyebrow furrowed and the other raised. “You don't know this?”

“Ha! As if I have time to catch up on foreign relations. I'm too busy feeding your ungrateful—” Nabooru glanced at Jahanara's stern face and then finished, “...mouth.” After a moment's pause, Nabooru continued, “But still, why is he doing this now? He didn't think to offer peace in the last seventeen years?”

“He probably wanted someone who was too young to remember the massacre properly. Someone like you two. I'm only here because I'm the leader. And it's also convenient that these two young, potentially forgiving Gerudo are my sisters. You could convince me to forgive him. At least that's what he's thinking. Clever bastard,” she concluded thoughtfully. Realizing what she had just said, she continued in a panic, “Oh! Meesha, I'm so sorry! I promised I would never use these words in front of you!”

If Meesha had rolled her eyes any harder, they might have lodged themselves out of her skull. “I'm fine, _Aji_. I am not a child, anymore.”

Jahanara smirked. “So you won't ruin any more of my dresses?”

Meesha crossed her arms. Nabooru snorted. “That was _one time_! You'll never let me forget, will you?”

“It was my favorite dress!”

“And it was much too small for you, and I looked better in it, anyway.”

Jahanara regarded her youngest sister with a sour look, then glanced at the middle one to see who's side she would take.

“She did look better in it,” Nabooru admitted, shrugging. 

“You always take her side,” the eldest muttered, leaning back on the carriage seat and re-crossing her arms. 

“Because she's always right.”

“I _am_ always right,” Meesha agreed, as though it were fact.

Before Jahanara could contest this fact, the carriage they had been lounging in suddenly jerked to a halt, sending Meesha flying to the opposite seat onto Nabooru. 

“Thank you, Goddess.” Jahanara turned her head up and held her hands out in prayer.

“Why did we stop?” Meesha asked, ignoring her sister and soothing a hand over her bruised forehead. 

“They're going to assassinate us!” Nabooru hissed. “I knew it! It was a farce! We're going to die! They're going to order us to come outside and then kill us!”

“Nabooru, hush!” Jahanara snapped. Her younger sister obeyed and bit her lip. The eldest swept the curtain obscuring the window to the side. There didn't seem to be any dark, foreboding figures out there.

Jahanara kicked her scimitar out from under the seat and wrapped a hand around its ornate hilt. Red and gold and much too intricate for any of the sisters to imitate in their own amateur metalwork.

“Stay here,” she ordered, jerking open the door. 

“I don't want to die!” Nabooru cried wrapping her arms around Meesha's waist. 

“Shut up, Nabooru.”

Now that Jahanara was out of earshot, Nabooru took the opportunity to let out a string of insults in her native tongue, harsh words rusted from disuse. 

“That felt good,” Nabooru sighed, burying her face in her sister's lap.

“Nabooru, get your head off my—”

“Good news.” Jahanara had returned, though Meesha thought she saw the faint outline of something in her arms. “We are not going to be killed.” She moved the mass into the carriage. It was a boy, blonde and pale-faced, a good foot shorter than any of the sisters had he stood. He lay unresponsive on the silken seat, the rise of his chest absent. “Unfortunately, we might have killed someone else instead.”

*

Zelda had made a countless number of enemies in her twenty-three years in this Realm, but stress, by far, was her worst. 

The most abundant source of which currently perched over the canopy of her bed, exactly where Zelda had ordered her not to be.

“Azar, I thought I had forbidden you from entering my room.” The princess did her best to keep her frustration from being completely apparent, but hiding things from the most skilled Sheikah this world had ever been graced with was next to impossible. 

“Mmmmm,” Azar mused, flipping the knife over in her hand. “And I thought I had forbidden you from sticking your royal nose in places where it doesn't belong.”

Next to impossible. Zelda had talents of her own that made it easier.

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” the princess answered smoothly, sticking up her aforementioned royal nose in a haughty display. Azar's least favorite thing was haughty displays. 

“Don't play dumb!” she screeched suddenly, her form dropping into the floor. A shadow rushed across the ivory stone and curled its body around the chair Zelda occupied, slowly re-shaping into human form. To both Azar and Zelda's surprise, however, the shadow re-shaped into not one, but two Sheikah. 

“Get out,” Impa hissed, her knife a hair's length from Zelda's neck, blocking the one in her leader's grasp.

Azar conceded, twirling the knife back into its sheath. “Fine.” She shrugged and met Impa's glare with an amused look. “The only other Sheikah left in the world, and it had to be one with no sense of humor. What a bore.”

At the sound of the door closing behind Azar, Zelda slouched back in her chair, slapped her hands to her face and let out a long, disgruntled noise. Impa had long since learned to interpret all of the odd sounds that erupted from the princess's mouth and suspected this one meant something along the lines of, “Goddess, if I have to spend another moment around that two-faced Bokobilin I will murder everyone in this castle...Except you, Impa, obviously.”

Arching her head back, Zelda stared up at her guardian. 

“Impa, let's ditch this meeting and go sneak off somewhere.”

Her guardian locked her arms over the chair and leaned forward. “Normally, I might only pretend to advise you against doing so and secretly enable your escape. But you're meeting Gerudo today. You might actually have some fun.”

“Fun?” Zelda repeated. “The last time I had any fun, I was twelve and the Zora princess and I had half the royal guard chasing after us.”

“Well, the last time I spent time with a Gerudo, she shoved me thirty feet off a sentry post. So I assure you, they are by no means a bore.”

“Hm? What did you do to get shoved off a sentry post?”

“That,” Impa said, laying a kiss on Zelda's nose. “Is a story for another time. When you don't have a mere half hour to shove yourself into an overly extravagant dress.”

“Woe is me,” Zelda sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I have no idea what I'm doing. *sobs* Maybe I'll just dump this, haaah....


	4. Meesha's Dislike of Grass

Actually, it would be inaccurate to say that there were only two ways to find the Truth in Hyrule.

The first was obviously to be a Sheikah (or to beat up a Sheikah, but we have already discussed the plausibility of such events taking place). The second was to spend one's entire life searching for answers.

The third was to _become_ a Sheikah.

Although that option was well nigh impossible. It was already difficult to be a Sheikah when one was already a Sheikah, but to be a Sheikah when one wasn't a Sheikah? Ludicrous.

Still, it was still more likely than the first option. One would need an incredibly high aptitude for magic, however, as well as enough resolve to commit to the rigorous training required of Sheikah warriors. One would also a need a teacher.

Fortunately, Zelda fulfilled all of the above criteria. And even if her magical prowess didn't hold up to some of the more talented magicians of Hyrule (She was one of the less magically inclined of the Zeldas, and more inclined towards stabbing things with knives), her stubbornness certainly made up for that void.

It was these talents, the Seeing, the merging into shadows, the subtle magic that allowed lies to unfold themselves, the things only Sheikah could do that had aided Zelda all these years. It was these talents that allowed her to be spared the suffocating goddess-less hour at dinner speaking of only proper things. It was these talents that kept her from being blamed by her father for the next political catastrophe for not abiding by the previous rule.

It was these talents that allowed her to be bunking her meeting with the Gerudo.

Impa would probably sigh at such a waste of Sheikah magic, but she was currently suffering the hell her charge had been spared.

“Where is she?” the King of Hyrule barked—relatively restrained, a soldier who had been on the opposite end of that temper might note. His barks towards Impa tended to be somewhat gentle, given that she was the only one who exerted some form of control over his daughter.

“I don't know, sir.” For once, it was the truth.

“She's lying.” Azar, who despised dinner tables almost as much as she despised Zelda, had chosen to sit with the shadows rather than in a seat. She slunk out from behind the king's chair and dropped these words with the carelessness of someone dumping rotten food in the trash.

“I'm not.”

Before the back-and-forth childishness could continue between the two Sheikah, the dining hall doors opened with a loud bang.

“Sorry. I had no idea the door would be so light.”

The woman who let out this hasty apology flexed a dark brown hand, as if mildly surprised by her own strength. Up flickered a face sharp and intelligent and so entirely _foreign woman_ because no woman in Hyrule proper would be caught dead with an inch of hair on her face. (Except for perhaps Zelda because she enjoyed offending everyone that wasn’t Impa.)

“Don’t show off, Meesha.” Her sister was more than a head shorter than her, thin and more palatable to the Hylian mind, with the exception of a pointed nose that had apparently been broken far too many times in her childhood.

“Nabooru, Meesha.” A third sister appeared, this one as equally unappealing in features as Meesha, though fat rather than muscular. Impa could tell by the flick of her tongue that she had just restrained herself from tutting at her sisters. “We are in the king’s presence. Behave yourselves.”

Jahanara (for how could Impa forget the three sisters she had spent one of the rougher parts of her childhood with) wore an embellished robe that skimmed the floor, sash and tunic trailing to her knees. Meesha wore something identical albeit in a difference color (pure white mixed with lilac designs rather than cream mixed with scarlet stones) and while Meesha was obviously the taller and stronger of the two, there was something about the way Jahanara carried herself that made it seem as if she were taking up the entire room.

How could Impa have mistaken Meesha as leader for even a second?

“Ah, esteemed guests.” King Daphnes snapped Impa out of her thoughts. “Please, have a seat.” To what seemed to be Jahanara’s relief, he made no mention of Nabooru’s childish outburst.

As Meesha sat down, a thought wriggled its way into Impa’s mind—the memory that, at least in some respects, Meesha was not a woman. She thought it harmless, a benign thought. Gender was a strange construct to Sheikah that they only followed to appease the Hylian royalty they served. It meant nothing to her what Meesha’s true gender was.

Until Impa remembered that she wasn't the only one who could see the Truth.

“Your heart is hammering, Impa,” Azar cackled. “What are you hiding?”

“Whose heart would not hammer at the sight of such beautiful women?”

The king let out a hearty laugh. “Well said, Impa. Would you not agree?” he asked the eldest.

“Indeed. Although, I'm sure you'll find that some of the prettiest flowers have the deadliest scent.”

King Daphnes laughed again. “Take Azar, for example.”

Nabooru’s nostrils flared. “No wonder men in Hyrule are all so miserable, if they think _that's_ beautiful,” she muttered. It had been meant only for her younger sister, but Impa heard. She snorted.

“What's so funny, Impa?” Azar snapped.

“Nothing, _zadeh._ ” Impa could practically feel the bile evaporate from her tongue. Nabooru gave Impa a familiar smile, but Impa, flustered from Azar’s scrutiny, looked away and immediately felt guilty.

After a few more seconds of banter and laughter between the king and Jahanara, Impa returned her attention to the younger siblings, both of whom smiled at eye contact.

“Forgive me,” the king said, continuing some conversation Impa had not been listening to. “My daughter has decided...not to show, I'm afraid.”

“Would you like me to look for her?” Meesha offered, a bit too quickly.

“That would actually be my job.” Impa added, just as fast. It seemed no one really wanted to be here.

But Meesha took it in stride. “It’s really no trouble. I think I would prefer a walk, anyway.”

The table was silent as the youngest Gerudo stood excusing herself with a curt bow.

“ _Your_ job, hmm, Impa?” Azar hissed, harsh but somehow soft enough that only Impa could hear. “She does better than you.”

*

The gardens of Hyrule Castle might have been solace to someone more familiar with flowers and greenery, but to Meesha, the trees and shrubs were an endless hindrance to her vision. Finding the princess through all this mess seemed like an impossible obstacle, like trying to find a matching pair of Nabooru’s socks when they were all similar dark shades.

Well, Meesha had ways of cheating.

She thought she felt the faintest flicker of magic somewhere—dark, but not Gerudo. If Meesha was correct in her guess, someone was using Sheikah magic somewhere nearby.

The magic Meesha had been taught was not Sheikah magic, but it had a common ancestor. She snapped thick, brown fingers, and a princess who had previously not been there appeared before her.

Zelda was staring at her.

“What?” Meesha asked. “Do you Hylians always become speechless when you see a beautiful woman?”

The princess shifted her gaze right, then left.

“I'm speaking to you, princess.”

Zelda did what any sensible person would do in this situation. She ran.

Meesha flicked her wrist so that the earth sprung up before Zelda, but she was surprised to find that the princess vaulted over the barrier with ease and disappeared behind the hedges. The Gerudo brought her hand down and the carpet of grass with it to find only bushes and flowers behind it. She held her breath. Finding the princess manually would be a much greater task.

Meesha heard a sneeze from the azalea bush.

And then a groan from the same source. A woman appeared from the hedge, collapsing flat on her back. “You got me.” She looked less like a princess lying there on the ground and more like a child who had been thoroughly defeated in a violent game of tag.

“No need to look so…” Meesha trailed off.

“So what?”

“So…I can’t remember the word in Hylian.”

“Crestfallen? Defeated? Discouraged?” Zelda lifted her chin to properly enunciate. “Broken?”

“No…uh…” Absentmindedly, she continued in her native language, “ _Absaun_ …”

“Oh, tamed.”

“You know Gerudo?”

“A little bit,” the princess admitted and rolled over on her belly. “But my father has banned the use of any language in the castle aside from Hylian, which makes it difficult to become proficient. Also, we don’t have very many Gerudo visiting.”

She lay there, elbows tucked into her waist, tugging at the neatly trimmed lawn. Meesha was seriously beginning to consider that this princess was some sort of decoy.

Zelda dislodged her arm from under her and pat the sheet of grass next to her. “Come, join me.”

When presented with this situation, it was difficult not to comply.

Though Meesha was not entirely comfortable. She sat cross-legged, every muscle in her body tense in the case that the real princess showed up and needed chasing.

“You must have been awfully bored in that meeting if you’d rather be stalking me.”

“Not stalking,” Meesha corrected with a hiss. “Your father sent me to search for you.”

“Mm-hmm,” Zelda hummed, apparently unconvinced. “I’ve had more than a few people who have said that to me.”

“You must be at the height of arrogance to think you’re even mildly pleasing to look at. Then again, I suppose Hylians have lower standards than Gerudo.” She hadn’t meant it to be so insulting, but only realized just how awful it sounded until it was too late.

Fortunately for her, Zelda didn’t seem to take offense easily. “Hmm, I could concede to that if you teach me how to grow a beard.”

“I’m afraid that’s entirely in the hands of the Goddess.”

“Goddesses,” Zelda corrected.

“So you believe, but I do not.”

The princess said nothing but instead regarded her new friend with a sweet smile, hand supporting her cheek. Meesha faltered under her gaze, not sure how to respond to positive attention from a Hylian, especially one with royal blood who approved of her beard.

“What do you like to do for fun?” Zelda finally asked, still smiling. “Aside from challenging everything a Hylian princess has to say?”

“Reading.” Meesha wasn’t sure why she felt the need to respond so quickly and seriously, but it elicited a positive response from the princess, her eyes bright and beaming.

“Let’s go to the library!” she exclaimed, on her feet in a fraction of a second.

Meesha, being at least two feet taller than her royal Highness, did not expect for something so small to exert enough force to pull her to standing and then drag her across the garden, as if she resembled a bird in weight.

But then, Meesha couldn’t complain about something good happening to her for once in her life.

*

The library, to Meesha’s relief, was considerably warmer than the rest of the castle. She had long forgotten the sensation of being surrounded by books, the only stock of Gerudo documents having been burned down in a fire years ago.

And Zelda’s company was a welcome change. She was well-educated and well-read, and though generally naïve, it was not to the point of frustration for the Gerudo.

“So what is it like having only male born a century?”

Except for maybe that.

It was not the first time Meesha had heard this explanation of the lack of men in her tribe, but she was disappointed to hear the princess parroting such a rumor. All she could do, really, was laugh in response.

“What’s so funny?” Zelda tilted her head to the side, so she might get a better look at the Gerudo’s face.

Meesha continued laughing, tears forming in her eyes, laughing over a few more of Zelda’s puzzled exclamations. She didn’t stop until a loud bang interrupted her.

“Zelda, get here this instant!” someone screeched. Meesha did not recognize the voice.

The princess sighed, nostrils flaring, eyes stern and annoyed in the direction of the voice. “Someone must have triggered one of my spells,” she explained, glancing back to her companion. “I’ll be back.”

Zelda had only just closed the library door behind her when Meesha heard a soft _thunk_ against the table.

“Hello.”

If someone told her that this body was the skeleton of a long-dead ancestor wrapped in bandages and purple cloth, Meesha would have believed them. Azar seemed to be alive through Goddess’s grace alone. The Gerudo tried to shift through her memory of any instances where Sheikah magic could bring back the dead and vaguely recalled reading something of the sort.

Her long, bony form took the seat opposite of Meesha, where Zelda had previously been sitting. She grinned crooked, scarlet eyes flashing with malice—though that would imply they weren’t always flashing with malice.

She reached out spider-thin fingers and dislodged the knife from finished wood.

“You know,” she started, flicking off splinters from the weapon. “You’re not allowed to tell her about any of this, right?”

“Any of what?” Meesha tested.

Azar looked vaguely annoyed and sighed. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“And who are you to stop me? I’ll tell, and then what shall you do?”

“Oh, _love_ ,” though the way the word was laced in her mouth, it dripped with the exact opposite of what it implied. “I didn’t have a problem with murdering the rest of your family, now did I?”

Meesha stood, chair screeching on the tile. Her eyes, normally as sweet and warm as honey, turned to cut topaz, hard and unyielding.

“You wouldn’t dare,” her voice low.

“You have a thick neck,” Azar pointed out, as if the likelihood of Meesha’s murder were as inconsequential as pointing out the time of day. “Though, that just makes it a larger target for my knives.”

Meesha inhaled sharply, her gaze still fixated on the Sheikah. But she understood the message and returned to her seat.

“Good girl,” Azar complimented with a wry smile.

Meesha only stopped staring after hearing the library door creak open.

“I’m back!” the princess greeted, a lively contrast to the walking dead that guarded her father.

When Meesha turned back, Azar had disappeared.

“Is something the matter?” Zelda asked, taking the same seat.

She regarded that spot, considering the risks of telling Zelda the real explanation of what had happened to her tribe.

“Nothing,” she finally answered.

*

There were a number of stereotypes among Hylians about what the Gerudo were like.

But one of these stereotypes was entirely due to Nabooru.

Most of the Hylian race—as it was for all races—suffered from apathy, even in the face of cruelty. Though most Hylians were lukewarm even with foreigners (for when you have met a king with flippers on his head, there are very few things on this earth than can surprise you) those same Hylians would generally ignore acts of discrimination, whether it be out of fear or confusion or an underlying approval of such discrimination.

It would stand to reason, then, that when a Hylian soldier felt the need to harass a young Gerudo woman, those same Hylians remained at their posts without batting an eye.

There was a portion of the remaining tribe that was used to such things and rarely interfered with fights that broke out. They would only drag their sisters to safety should an altercation escalate to the point where blood was spilt. There was also a portion of the tribe that would use more manipulative or diplomatic means to get their sisters out of trouble, pleading with or reasoning with a soldier that had lost their temper.

And then there was Nabooru who confronted everything head-on and made a mess of everything.

“I’m sorry, sorry!” The Gerudo threw her arms up in front of her face, so occupied with defending herself, she tripped and landed on her side.

A few surrounding Gerudo flinched at the force of the soldier’s kick, so hard, one could hear the loud crack of bone fracturing.

One of the soldiers moved to stop him, but then remembered that an act of defiance would lead to a cut in his salary, and his three children would starve.

Nabooru, however, had neither a salary nor any children (nor any dignity, her sister might say, but that was irrelevant and untrue). She had no reason to fear this Hylian soldier.

Aside from the threat of death and whatnot, but again, inconsequential.

“Hey!”

A sensible tribe elder let out a groan.

The captain (for Nabooru could only tell due to the incredibly important badges shining on his chest—she had stolen a few of them before and exchanged them for bangles) seemed mildly intrigued that a Gerudo would confront him. He regarded the short, skinny woman with a raised eyebrow.

“What’s wrong with you?” Nabooru snapped. Without hesitating, she pulled the victim of his tantrum up, supporting the arm he had broken.

“Hah!” the soldier spat. “A thief helping a thief! Don’t ask me what’s wrong! Can’t you teach her to keep her hands to herself?”

The rest of the conversation didn’t need much explaining since it involved curses and insults and words the made the older, more prude Gerudo gasp and cup hands over their ears. The mixture of arrogance and anger quickly led to a physical altercation. No one around them was sure who started what, but the point was that both of them were bleeding and it looked that neither would stop until the other was dead.

Jahanara, being the only creature in this realm that could control Nabooru’s temper, was summoned immediately.

“You fool!” Jahanara chided, dragging her sister by the arm. She made a sign of forgiveness at the soldier, hoping he would be able to interpret it as such. “Do you want to get yourself killed?” She then proceeded to give her a lecture that last two hours.

Anyway, the reason why any of this mattered was that Nabooru and Jahanara were once again having a heated argument over Nabooru’s crass behavior. Which was worrisome because in a flare of temper, one of the sisters might reveal secrets Zelda should not have known about.

“I don’t care what it says!” Jahanara snapped. Her hair was a bushy web of tangles reaching down to her hips, clothes plain and much less formal than what she had worn on their arrival. She had just prepared to sleep only to have to tear herself out from the sheets to stop her sister from getting all of them killed.

“You don’t care?” Nabooru shouted back. “Yes! As usual you want to lie down and let Hylians stomp all over you! The elders made a mistake in choosing you as tribe leader!”

“No! I’m just not _hot-heated_ and _stupid_ like you are! I’m trying to keep the rest of us _alive_! If you confronted the king like this, you’d have us all killed and we’d lose any hope of diplomacy between ourselves and them!”

Meesha, who had retreated to her sister’s bedroom due to a mixture of nightmares and sensory problems, regarded this argument with heavy eyelids and pulled the sheets over her face.

“You’re not upset that they’re completely _lying_ about what they did to us?”

“Of course, I’m upset! But I’m not just going to beat up the king because something a stupid Gossip Stone says!”

Nabooru, fed up with her sister’s excuses, kicked her hard in the shin and stormed out of the room.

Jahanara let out a string of expletives in response, in contrary to how she normally censored herself in front of her youngest sister. She didn’t bother to chase after Nabooru, which probably turned out to be in her best interests since Nabooru had stormed in the direction of castle town and destroyed everything in her wake.

And so, that night, as Nabooru displaced her rage onto some poor fellow in the street, the stereotype that all Gerudo were violent, angry women blossomed in Hyrule Kingdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry I take forever to update and then update with trash, and I’m sorry my chapter length is totally inconsistent and I’m just sorry about everything, please forgive me.
> 
> Also, I’m a cis person writing Ganon’s gender, so if I make a horrendous mistake or if you have any suggestions for improvement, please let me know.


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